Fitbit's latest outclassed, outpriced by 2017 Apple Watch

You kind of have to feel bad for Fitbit. It popularised the fitness wearable trend, which was the trojan horse for smartwatches, which are now the thing that’s going to kill the Fitbit.

Although the company no doubt hoped its most recent releases — the Versa 2 smartwatch, Aria Air smart scale, and a premium subscription coaching plan — would help them turn around their losses of the last few years, they come across more as a misstep.

Fitbit Versa 2 is great at sleep tracking, but otherwise inferior to the less expensive Apple Watch Series 3.

In comparison to your basic Fitbit, the Versa 2 is quite an advanced smartwatch. It’s got Amazon Alexa built in, smart sleep tracking and a range of surprisingly scratchy bands.

It’s also $329.95, or $10 more than an Apple Watch Series 3, meaning any iPhone user would be borderline certifiable to buy one over the far smarter and superior Apple Watch unless they really, really cared about sleep tracking. Android users might still be tempted if they’re only interested in basic smart fitness features.

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Spending the last few weeks with a Versa 2 it became apparent that it is just Malibu Stacy in a new hat, where the hat is a smart assistant you don’t really want or need.

The Versa 2 feels like such an unnecessary release when it’s basically the same as the original Versa. It costs $80 more than the Versa Lite, which is almost the same watch but without Alexa, contactless payments, or on-screen workouts.

The Fitbit Versa 2 has Amazon Alexa built in.

That aside, for Android users who don’t yet have a Versa or Ionic (or if their Versa or Ionic has broken and they still like being in the Fitbit ecosystem), it’s a solid smart fitness watch, which is good at detecting when you do workouts.

It’s not going to satisfy hardcore fitness nerds who want every metric in the most accurate way, nor will it satisfy people who want a very smart watch, but unlike the Apple Watch it does have a six-day battery life and a renewed focus on sleep tracking, which it does extremely well.

Meanwhile the Aria Air is a connected smart scale that doesn’t pretend it can accurately determine your fat to muscle ratio. At $129 the Air is cheaper than its more advanced Aria 2 siblings, and only determines your weight and BMI (which is a basic, if often misleading, indicator of a “healthy” weight), and it automatically syncs with your Fitbit account.

However it's unclear why the Aria exists, as you can just weigh yourself on ordinary $20-bathroom scales and manually input the weight to your Fitbit account, getting your BMI that way.

The connected Fitbit Aria Air will send your weight to your Fitbit account.

And without the (although often inaccurate) distinction between gaining muscle and losing fat, the whole system compounds the risk already posed by apps which track calories burned, food consumed, and weight gained and lost, of triggering disordered or obsessive eating and fitness. It should be used with great caution.

Overall the Aria Air and Versa 2 are shining examples of Fitbit’s current lack of creativity, and desperate need for innovation if the company wishes to survive. The tech is perfectly fine, but there’s better out there for cheaper, and just relying on people buying new products to replace broken old ones is not a strategy that encourages long term loyalty. Sleep tracking is good, but the popularity of the Apple Watch shows that it isn’t enough to make or break a smartwatch.